The Best Home Inkjet Printers [UK]

I remember the first printer I ever bought back in the early 90s. It was a heavy, bulky monstrosity that took an age to set up and configure and, when it came to ink consumption, it was the machine version of a park bench wino.

All of that was before the minor heart attack that I had when I saw the price of replacement ink cartridges for the first time.Thankfully, printers these days are a bit more user (and wallet) friendly. Especially the HP Envy 5010.

This mobile inkjet printer can be connected in moments, via dual band wifi, to your router and mobile device and the way the machine self-configures (with a little help from you) is very clever. Basically all that you need to do is print off a specific sheet then rescan it back into the Envy 5010 and it will do the rest.

I saw a few customer reviews online where people had had problems with setting up and connectivity but I had no issues whatsoever. On closer inspection of some of the reviews it was made clear that the customer hadn’t followed the recommended set up using windows 10 and the specific App and had instead tried to do it their own way, so this might have been the cause for some of them.

Once set up, you can use the handy touch screen display to easily navigate the organised menus and print images straight from your smart phone, tablet or other mobile device in resolutions up to 1200×1200 rendered dpi, or 4800×1200 optimised dpi. In layman’s terms that’s 1200×1200 for mono and 4800×1200 for colour.

This image quality should be good enough for all your home printing needs and if you require more, you should probably be looking at a higher end professional printer instead. The printing speed is 9 pages per minute for mono and 6 pages for colour which is decent for a budget machine.

A nice feature of this home inkjet printer is the automatic two sided printing mode where the paper is fed back into the machine automatically and then second side is printed. This really saves you a lot of time and messing around for certain jobs.

Talking of saving, when you buy the HP Envy 5010 from Amazon, you get 2 months free trial to their instant ink service. When subscribed to this service, your printer will automatically detect what ink you need and then order it for you through the internet. HP sell this ink at a lower price than what you find elsewhere and claim that it will save you up to 70% when compared to buying elsewhere online. The service is optional but it does seem to be a good option to consider if you decide to purchase this affordable yet capable home inkjet printer.

Epson’s Expression Home XP-3100 is a bargain. A 3-in-1 inkjet printer, capable of producing high resolution images, with multiple connectivity options, that is priced at under 45 pounds, is not something to be sniffed at.

This home inkjet printer is completely mobile and can be used just about anywhere with no need for a router. This is because the Expression XP-3100 is able to connect directly to your smartphone, tablet, etc. You can use Epson’s iPrint app to print photos and other images directly from social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, and also use it to let your creativity loose on artistic projects.

If you are at home and have a wifi router, then of course you can connect to that for a faster experience, and you can also print from long distance via email by simply sending files to the machine.

The XP-3100 doesn’t have a fancy touch screen like the HP Envy but the LCD screen is clear, easy to navigate, and simple to operate. In fact it is quite feasible to do a lot of your printing using only the LCD interface and without plugging in your computer or laptop.

One thing that could be improved on though is that although the LCD screen is illuminated nicely, the other buttons to operate the printer do not light up and can be hard to see in the dark.

Automatic double sided printing is a feature that the XP-3100 shares with the HP Envy and it works in much the same way. Another thing they have in common is automatic ink detection and replenishment through an internet connected service. Epson’s version is called ReadyInk and works on a pay as you go basis.

When it comes to ink, Epson gives you a few choices with this model. There are standard and extra-large ink cartridges available, with the latter being the most cost effective if you intend on doing a lot of printing, and with the XP-3100 you can just replace the colour you need not all of the colours at the same time which is often the case with budget home inkjet printers.

One thing I will note is that the printer arrives with only a small amount of ink so you will have to buy replacements very soon after buying, so please bear that in mind.

Both of our previous reviews were budget home inkjet printers and, while the quality of the images they produce are more than adequate for most home tasks, some people might be looking for sharper prints.

This is where the HP Officejet Pro 6950 comes in. It is higher up on the price range, costing approximately double that of the Epson expression, but the printing quality is superior giving you excellent long lasting images.

HP claims a 20+ page per minute printing speed but this is only attainable if you are printing simple text in mono. If you are working with more complex colour images, you are likely to get closer to 6 pages per minute based on our tests, and printing a photo takes about a minute and a half. I guess quality takes time though.

Being a new HP model, the Officejet pro 6950 has a few things in common with some of their other home inkjet printers such as a good touchscreen interface, being HP Instant ink compatible, and having the ability to connect to a mobile device like your smartphone through direct wifi. You can also set the machine to print on both sides of the paper automatically like with the HP Envy model.

The paper tray on this home inkjet printer holds up to 250 sheets but annoyingly, it isn’t removable from the main unit. This can make it a bit annoying at times especially when trying to remove certain types of paper.

Another thing I wasn’t too keen on was the scanner in the Officejet Pro 6950. It’s quite slow, especially when at the maximum 1200 dots per inch. I didn’t time it precisely, but I had time to go make a cup of tea in the adjoining room and returned to see it finishing.

This model is quite good on ink consumption, with an extra-large sized colour ink cartridge getting you around 800+ pages before needing to be replaced and a black cartridge getting you just under double that.

To sum up, the HP Officejet Pro 6950 can produce some very nice prints and has some nice new modern features. However the scanning is slower than what I expected from a machine that costs around a hundred pounds.

When it comes to producing crisp, detailed and colourful prints, Canon’s Pixma MG 4250 advanced all in one printer has you covered. Capable of images at 4800 dpi print resolution, this home inkjet printer is a great addition to your home office and can consistently arm you with the type of prints that you can take to presentations or meetings with confidence.

It is also great for printing photos and can do so direct from your phone or an SD card using the flip up LCD display. Another cool feature is that you can scan an image using the flatbed scanner and send it automatically to your mobile device for storage.

The canon Pixma MG 4250 comes with ‘My image garden’ software so you can get creative and combine various photos before printing them and the face recognition software really helps with this. There is also an app that allows you to print directly from Facebook called ‘print your days’.

Print speed of this model is about 10 A4 pages per minute for mono and around 6 for colour. This is on par with the HP Envy but I would say the print quality of this Canon home inkjet printer is superior.

Like most new printers, the canon Pixma MG 4250 is capable of auto duplex printing but I found this to work too slow for my liking. I was also disappointed that Canon didn’t include a sheet feeder so you have to feed the paper one at a time when doing standard printing. If you have a multipage document to print, this can get a little tedious.

Despite a few minor faults, this is a reliable home printer that can produce quality prints and comes with some interesting software and features.

With the deskjet 2630 HP have delivered to us a super low cost all-in-one printer that is perfect for occasional home use. Because of the low price, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the HP 2630 would be very light on features, but you’d be very wrong. Sure, there a few money saving things that have been done to keep the price as low as it is such as not including a USB cable, or having to do two sided prints by hand, but these things are to be expected.

This ultra-budget home printer is very easy to set up and operate. HP wireless connect and various available apps mean that there are no issues connecting to your smartphone or tablet and it also supports Apple AirPrint. Like more expensive models, the HP 2630 also allows you to scan and then send them direct to your mobile device. The unit itself is tidy and compact and sports a nice LCD control panel where you can access the basic functions of the printer. If you are a bit more tech savvy and want to get into the deeper settings, you can do so by using the HP mobile app.

When it comes to printing speed, this particular model isn’t the fastest but can still produce about 5-6 pages per minute. The prints that come out though are of surprisingly good quality, especially the 4800×1200 dpi colour images that have a nice vibrancy to them. I can honestly say that there wasn’t much difference in quality between this printer and some of the more expensive models we tested.

Now for the downside. Being a budget printer, it uses a black cartridge and a tricolor one, so you won’t be able to replace individual colours and this will prove to be more expensive over time. You could save a little money by investing in the extra-large cartridges that will last longer than the standard ones, giving you about 320-330 pages before they run out. This model comes with a free 2 month trial for HP’s Instant Ink service that we mentioned in our earlier reviews.

In conclusion, this is a good budget printer and scanner for people who only use one occasionally. For more frequent use, the price of ink could make it more worth your while to invest a little more initially on a more expensive product.